Symonds-Peter

The protests in Tehran over the weekend have served to highlight the limited social base of the political opponents of the dominant faction of the Iranian clerical regime. The opposition movement has not only failed to draw in broader layers of working people, but has markedly weakened.

From the outset, the color-coded campaign to replace incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad with Mir Hossein Mousavi has been a highly orchestrated political operation backed by the US and managed by dissident elements of the ruling elite—in particular, former president and billionaire businessman Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani—for their own ends.

There is nothing progressive in their aims. Insofar as they have differences with their erstwhile associates, Mousavi and his supporters are seeking to shift policies further to the right through a more rapid accommodation with the US and a drastic acceleration of the program of market reform. They make no appeal to working people, for whom such a program can only mean economic devastation, and base themselves on sections of the bourgeoisie and more privileged and frankly selfish layers of the urban middle classes.

The political crisis unfolding in Iran raises fundamental issues for the working class. The outcome of last Friday’s presidential election has exposed a sharp rift within the country’s clerical regime between the backers of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and those of his chief rival, Mirhossein Mousavi.

No one should be hoodwinked by the “colour revolution” being carefully orchestrated by the Mousavi camp to overturn the election result and demand a fresh poll. While there are tactical differences between Ahmadinejad and Mousavi, both are tested defenders of the existing regime and the interests of the Iranian bourgeoisie.

[…]

As it has in the past, US imperialism is seeking to exploit the political turmoil in Iran to bring about a modification of the regime more favourable to its economic and strategic interests—in the first place, to secure greater Iranian support for its neo-colonial occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq.

If Mousavi were to pull off his “colour revolution,” the first to bear the brunt would be the working class and the poor, as the new regime sought to rein in public spending, privatise state-owned enterprises and guarantee the profits of local businesses and foreign investors. The barely concealed class hostility of Mousavi and his well-heeled supporters to working people is summed in their open contempt towards Ahmadinejad’s meagre handouts to the poor.

A ground assault by US Special Forces troops on a Pakistani village on Wednesday threatens to expand the escalating Afghanistan war into its neighbour. Pakistan is already confronting a virtual civil war in its tribal border regions as the country’s military, under pressure from Washington, seeks to crush Islamist militias supporting the anti-occupation insurgency inside Afghanistan.

The attack, which left up to 20 civilians dead, marks a definite escalation of US operations inside Pakistan. While US Predator drones and war planes have been used previously to bomb targets, Wednesday’s raid was the first clear case of an assault by American ground troops inside Pakistani territory. The White House and Pentagon have refused to comment on the incident but various unnamed US officials have acknowledged to the media that the raid took place and indicated that there could be more to come.

The attack was unprovoked. US troops landed by helicopter in the village of Jalal Khei in South Waziristan at around 3 a.m. and immediately targetted three houses. The engagement lasted for about 30 minutes and left between 15 and 20 people dead, including women and children.

A US official acknowledged to CNN that there may have been women and children in the immediate vicinity but when the mission began “everyone came out firing from the compound”. Even this flimsy justification for a naked act of aggression is probably a lie. “It was very terrible as all of the residents were killed while asleep,” a villager Din Mohammad told the Pakistan-based International News.

The newspaperprovided details of the dead and injured: nine family members of Faujan Wazir, including four women, two children and three men; Faiz Mohammad Wazir, his wife and two other family members; and Nazar Jan and his mother. Two other members of Nazar Jan’s family were seriously wounded.

The US and international media have described the Angoor Adda area around the village as “a known stronghold of the Taliban and Al Qaeda” but offered no evidence to support the claim. A villager, Jabbar Wazir, told the International News: “All of those killed were poor farmers and had nothing to do with the Taliban.”

In comments to the International Herald Tribune, a senior Pakistani official branded the raid a “cowboy action” that had failed to capture or kill any senior Al Qaeda or Taliban leader. “If they had gotten anyone big, they would be bragging about it,” he commented.

The attack has provoked outrage in Pakistan. Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry issued a statement branding the attack as “a gross violation of Pakistan territory” and summoned US ambassador Anne Patterson to provide an explanation. North West Frontier Province (NWFP) governor Owais Ahmed Ghani declared that “the people expect that the armed forces of Pakistan would rise to defend the sovereignty of the country”. He put the number killed at 20.

Pakistani military spokesman Major General Athar Abbas said the raid was “completely counterproductive” and risked provoking an uprising even among those tribesmen who have previously supported the army’s operations in the border areas.

The International News reported: “Angry villagers later blocked the main road between Pakistan and Afghanistan in Angoor Adda by placing the bodies of their slain tribesmen on the road. They chanted slogans against the US and NATO military authorities for crossing the border without any provocation and killing innocent people.”

The US raid has compounded the political crisis inside Pakistan, where the selection of a new president is due to take place tomorrow. The ruling Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) has been engaged in a delicate balancing act—continuing to support US demands for a crackdown by the Pakistani military along the border with Afghanistan, while trying to defuse widespread anger and fend off accusations that it is a US puppet.

Reaffirming his support for the Bush administration’s bogus “war on terror”, PPP presidential candidate Asif Ali Zardari declared in a column in yesterday’s Washington Post: “We stand with the United States, Britain, Spain and others who have been attacked.” Zardari went on to promise that he would ensure that Pakistani territory would not be used to launch raids on US and NATO forces inside Afghanistan.

However, as PPP spokesman Farhatullah Babar explained, the US attack was politically compromising. “We have been very clear that any action on this side of the border must be taken by Pakistani forces themselves,” he told the Associated Press. “It is very embarrassing for the government. The people will start blaming the government of Pakistan.”

An expanded war

The decision to launch Wednesday’s attack was undoubtedly taken at the top levels of the White House and Pentagon. As the New York Times reported in articles earlier this year, a high-level debate has been taking place in Washington over the use of US Special Forces inside Pakistan as well as the intensification of existing CIA operations, which include Predator missile strikes.

A meeting in early January involved Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Admiral Mike Mullen and top national security and intelligence officials advisers. According to the New York Times on January 6, options discussed included “loosening restrictions on the CIA to strike selected targets in Pakistan” and operations involving US Special Operations forces, such as the Navy Seals.

The Times reported on January 27 that then Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf rejected proposals put by US Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell and CIA Director Michael Hayden for an expanded American combat presence in Pakistan, either through covert CIA missions or joint operations with Pakistani security forces. While apparently accepting the refusal, the US intensified pressure on Pakistan to bring its border areas under control.

As the anti-occupation insurgency has expanded in Afghanistan, claiming a growing number of US and NATO casualties, Pakistan has become a convenient scapegoat. Washington has repeatedly accused the Pakistani military of failing to suppress Islamist militia and alleged that Pakistani military intelligence is actively supporting anti-US guerrillas inside Afghanistan.

Admiral Mullen has held five meetings since February with his Pakistani counterpart, army chief General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, to press for tougher action. The most recent took place last weekend aboard the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, stationed in the Arabian Sea. In comments to CNN, a US official “declined to say” whether there were any new agreements for US troops to operate inside Pakistani airspace or on the ground to attack Taliban and Al Qaeda.

Whether the Pakistani military quietly approved Wednesday’s attack or not, the Bush administration is making clear that it intends to extend the war into Pakistan. Citing top American officials, the New York Times reported on Wednesday that the raid “could be the opening salvo in a much broader campaign by Special Operations forces against the Taliban and Al Qaeda inside Pakistan, a secret plan that Defence Secretary Robert Gates has been advocating for months within President George W. Bush’s war council”.

This utterly reckless policy, which risks the eruption of a US war against Pakistan, is bipartisan in character. In fact, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has repeatedly declared his support for broadening the “war on terror” through unilateral US attacks on insurgents based inside Pakistan. His candidacy has been strongly backed by sections of the US establishment that have been critical of the Bush administration’s invasion of Iraq for undermining US interests. Far from opposing aggressive US military action, Obama has become the political vehicle for shifting its focus to Afghanistan and Pakistan as the means of advancing US strategic interests in Central Asia and the Indian subcontinent.

The US attack on the village of Jalal Khei is another demonstration that the shift in policy, with all its potentially catastrophic consequences, is already underway.

The catastrophe wrought by Cyclone Nargis on the Burmese people has provoked an extraordinary campaign by the US and allied powers, and in the international media, demanding that the military junta open its borders to aid and aid officials as well as to American military aircraft, troops and warships. Once again an attempt is being made to stampede public opinion with heartrending images of desperate survivors and devastated towns, accompanied by an incessant drumbeat condemning the Burmese regime for its inadequate aid efforts, its insularity, and its failure to accept international, especially American, aid.

One should immediately pause and recall the outcome of similar “humanitarian” exercises. In 1999, the plight of Kosovan refugees was exploited by the US and its allies to wage war against Serbia and transform the province into a NATO protectorate largely “cleansed” of its Serbian minority. In the same year, Australia, with the backing of the US, used the violence of Indonesian-backed militias to justify a military intervention into East Timor to install a regime sympathetic to Canberra’s economic and strategic interests. After nearly a decade the local populations in both countries continue to live in appalling conditions, with none of their fundamental needs having been met.

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During a press conference on Tuesday, US President George Bush spelled out the threat to Iran contained in last week’s release of CIA intelligence on an alleged Syrian nuclear reactor. As well as warning Syria and North Korea, which purportedly helped construct the building, he declared that the US was “sending a message to Iran, and the world for that matter, about just how destabilising a nuclear proliferation would be in the Middle East”.

While Bush did not explain what the “message” was, the context makes it abundantly clear. Last September, Israeli warplanes demolished the building in an unprovoked act of aggression that had the potential to trigger a wider war. The US administration, which undoubtedly gave the green light for the attack, presented uncorroborated intelligence last week that the building housed an uncompleted reactor and that Syria was trying to build a nuclear weapon. The unstated threat to Tehran was: the US and Israel are prepared to destroy Iranian nuclear facilities as well.

None of the Israeli and US intelligence made public last week implicated Tehran in Syria’s alleged plans for a nuclear reactor. So why single Iran out for special mention? As far as nuclear proliferation is concerned, Israel is the only country in the region with a stockpile of nuclear weapons, and US regional allies—Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Turkey—have all announced plans for nuclear reactors. By naming Iran, Bush not only underscored the hypocritical character of his stance, but confirmed Tehran is at the top of the list of US targets.

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More than seven months after Israeli warplanes destroyed a building in Syria’s eastern desert, the Bush administration has released intelligence purporting to prove that Damascus was building a nuclear reactor at the site, with the assistance of North Korea, as part of plans to build an atomic bomb.

The CIA intelligence briefing last Thursday raised more questions than it answered, and fuelled considerable speculation about its timing and purpose. In all the commentary, however, the most obvious point is deliberately obscured. The US is belatedly justifying an unprovoked and illegal act of aggression by Israel, undoubtedly sanctioned at the time by Washington, that had the potential to spark a new war in the Middle East.

A White House statement hypocritically warned that Syria’s covert construction of the reactor was “a dangerous and potentially destabilising development for the region and the world”, carried out in violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). It is an open secret, however, that Israel, with Washington’s tacit approval, has covertly manufactured a substantial arsenal of nuclear weapons, refused to sign the NPT and blocked International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspections of its facilities.

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Fighting between Iraqi security forces, backed by the US military, and militia loyal to Shiite leader Moqtada al-Sadr continued unabated yesterday following a government offensive launched in the southern port city of Basra on Tuesday. Up to 200 people have been killed, many of them civilians, in clashes over the past three days in Basra, as well as the southern towns of Kut, Diwaniya, Hilla and Amara, and the sprawling slums of Sadr City in eastern Baghdad.

A great deal is at stake for Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who has moved to Basra to take personal charge of the operation. He has been under pressure to act against the Sadrists, not only from Washington, but from the two Shiite factions on which he rests—his own Da’wa party and the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI). The latter in particular has been engaged in a protracted power struggle with the Sadrists across southern Iraq in preparation for provincial elections due in October.

ISCI regards the Sadrist movement as a barrier to its ambition to establish an autonomous Shiite region in southern Iraq similar to the Kurdish region in the north. The Sadrist movement, with its large base of support in Baghdad, supports a strong central government and is opposed to ISCI’s plans. Basra, which is Iraq’s second largest city, a major port and adjacent to the country’s southern oil fields, is at the centre of this rivalry.

In a statement on national TV yesterday, Maliki rejected calls by Sadrist leaders for him to leave Basra and start negotiations. “We entered this battle with determination and we will continue to the end. No retreat. No talks. No negotiations,” he declared. Maliki issued a 72-hour ultimatum on Wednesday for militiamen in Basra to surrender their weapons or face the consequences. However, the Sadrist militias have ignored the deadline, which was due to expire today, and entrenched themselves in large areas of the city.

In a speech at the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base yesterday, US President George Bush hailed Maliki’s “bold decision to go after illegal groups in Basra”. He declared that the operation demonstrated the progress made by Iraqi security forces, who had planned and led the operation. The offensive, Bush claimed, was one more sign that the “surge” of US troops “was bringing America closer to a key strategic victory in the war against these extremists and radicals”.

In fact, as a number of US analysts have nervously noted, the assault in Basra has the potential to destroy what has been one of the key factors in the comparative lull in fighting in recent months—a ceasefire announced by Sadr last August, and renewed for another six months in February.

Time magazine, for instance, commented: “Could Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s attempts to reestablish control over Basra backfire? There is a growing possibility that it could become a wider intra-Shiite war, drawing in the forces loyal to radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, whose ceasefire has been key to the success of the US ‘surge’. If so, the consequences for American military strategy in Iraq in an all-important political year will be grave.”

As for claims that the Basra operation is Iraqi-led, Bush’s speech makes clear that the impetus came from Washington, rather than Baghdad. There is no doubt that the entire offensive was planned, well in advance, in the closest collaboration with US generals. US advisors and “transition teams” are embedded with Iraqi soldiers in Basra. The US military is providing air support and intelligence to troops on the ground.

US military spokesman Major General Kevin Bergner refused to comment on what would happen if the Iraqi government failed to complete the Basra operation, saying only that it was “a very hypothetical question at this time”. However, the Pentagon and the White House undoubtedly have contingency plans and are watching the situation very closely. The Christian Science Monitor noted that the US-funded television station Al Hurra reported that a contingent of US marines was in Basra, involved mainly in sniper operations.

Despite American military support and superior firepower, the Iraqi offensive in Basra, which involves nearly 30,000 soldiers and police, appears to have stalled. According to a New York Times article, as much as half the city was under militia control yesterday. “Witnesses said that from the worn, closely packed brick buildings of one Madhi stronghold, the Hayaniya neighbourhood, Mahdi fighters fired mortars, rocket-propelled grenades, automatic weapons and sniper rifles at seemingly helpless Iraqi army units pinned on a main road outside, their armoured vehicles unable to enter the narrow streets,” it stated.

The newspaper noted that hospitals in parts of the city were reported full. Most casualties were civilians caught in the crossfire, according to hospital officials. Violence was continuing to spread, including to areas south of the city. One of the two major pipelines from the southern oil fields was blown up yesterday, cutting capacity by one third and sending international oil prices spiking to more than $US106 a barrel.

The Christian Science Monitor reported: “Al Sharquiya TV, a private Iraqi station often critical of the Iraqi government, showed what it said were exclusive images of masked militiamen—some of them in military fatigues—parading Humvees they had seized from Iraqi government forces in Basra… Yahya al-Taiee, a Basra-based lawyer and member of the Sadr movement, said many Iraqi soldiers have surrendered themselves and their vehicles to the Mahdi Army.”

Clashes spread

Fierce fighting has also occurred on other southern Iraqi towns. The Associated Press cited local officials as saying that 40 people had been killed and 75 wounded in clashes in Kut. On Wednesday, a US air strike on an alleged Mahdi Army base in Hilla resulted in a large number of casualties. A police source told Reuters that 29 people had been killed and 39 wounded during an attack that lasted an hour and destroyed six houses.

Tensions are high in Baghdad’s largely working class Shiite suburb of Sadr City after sporadic clashes between Madhi Army fighters and Iraqi and US forces. Militiamen have erected barricades and patrol the streets. Iraqi and US troops have thrown up a cordon around the suburb. A New York Times photographer, who managed to get into Sadr City, reported “more layers of checkpoints, each one run by about two dozen heavily-armed Madhi Army fighters clad in tracksuits and T-shirts. Tyres burned in the city centre, gunfire echoed against shuttered stores, and teams of fighters in pickup trucks moved about brandishing machine guns, sniper rifles and rocket propelled grenade launchers.”

The heavily-fortified Green Zone, which houses the US embassy and the Iraqi government, has come under repeated rocket and mortar attack in recent days. Two American officials have been killed over the past week and a number of US and Iraqis wounded.

Yesterday gunmen in Baghdad seized Tahseen al-Sheikhli, a member of the Maliki government and the chief spokesman for the Baghdad security plan. The Iraqi military has now imposed a three-day curfew on the capital, banning any unauthorised vehicles or pedestrians from the streets from 11 p.m. on Thursday to 5 a.m. on Sunday

As fighting continued, Iraqi and US spokesmen continued to claim that the Sadrist movement was not the real target of the assaults. Maliki’s adviser Sadiq al-Rikabi told the media: “The battle in Basra is not really a political battle. It’s purely security—against the criminals and all the murderers.” In a similar vein, Major General Bergner denied that the actions were against the Mahdi Army. It is the government of Iraq taking responsibility and acting to deal with criminals on the streets,” he said.

Few people are fooled by this fiction, least of all Madhi Army militiamen. A commander in Sadr City, Abu Mortada, told the New York Times: “The US, the Iraqi government and SCIRI [now known as ISCI] are against us. They are trying to finish us. They want power for the Iraqi government and SCIRI.” Sadrist parliamentarians in Baghdad issued an appeal yesterday for an end to the assault in Basra, stating: “We call on our brothers in the Iraqi army and the brave national police not to be tools of death in the hands of the new dictatorship.”

The attempt to maintain the lie that the fighting is directed against “criminals” or rogue elements of the Mahdi Army is aimed at encouraging Moqtada al-Sadr not to tear up the ceasefire. For months, the cleric has been walking an increasingly precarious political tightrope between his tacit acceptance of the US-led occupation—as signified by the truce—and mounting anger among his supporters. US and Iraqi forces have exploited the ceasefire to round up Madhi Army militiamen and attack their bases. After effectively turning a blind eye for months, Sadr finally protested in recent weeks and demanded the release of Mahdi Army detainees.

In response to the offensive against the Madhi Army in Basra, Sadr has called for a campaign of civil disobedience, but has kept the ceasefire in place. He is, however, sitting on top of a political volcano. In the working class Shiite suburbs of Baghdad, Basra and other southern towns, there is deep-seated hostility to the Maliki government’s close relations with the Bush administration and collaboration with the US military occupation, which has brought nothing but death, destruction and plummetting living standards.

Anger welled over in protests by Sadr’s supporters in Baghdad yesterday. A Guardian report put the numbers involved at tens of thousands in separate rallies in Sadr City and the Baghdad suburb of Kadhimiyah, where protestors carried a coffin with a picture of Maliki and chanted “Maliki, keep your hands off. People do not want you.” Placards and signs also demanded the execution of ISCI head Abdul Aziz al-Hakim. Both men were denounced as US stooges.

While Sadr is appealing for negotiations to defuse the situation, the Maliki government backed by Washington appears determined to continue the offensive in Basra and other areas against the Mahdi Army. Far from consolidating the US occupation, these operations have the potential to trigger a Shiite uprising that would rapidly engulf the Maliki government.

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An air strike on Sunday on a compound in the Pakistani tribal area of South Waziristan that borders Afghanistan has left up to 20 people dead. While Washington has not acknowledged responsibility, there is little doubt that the US military or the CIA carried out the attack as part of a widening covert war against anti-American militants entrenched in the Pakistani border areas.

Up to seven missiles or bombs flattened the compound just south of the regional centre of Wana at around 3 p.m. “When I heard the explosions, I rushed to the place where it happened. I saw dead bodies scattered everywhere,” a villager Aziz Ullah Wazir told the Washington Post. Local residents and officials claimed that the house belonged to a Taliban sympathiser, Noorullah Wazir, and was frequented by “Arabs”—the term used to denote foreign supporters of the Taliban and Al Qaeda.

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The UN General Assembly meets this week under the shadow of menacing demands by the US and its allies for tough new UN sanctions against Iran over its alleged nuclear weapons programs. The Bush administration’s “diplomacy”, in which the French government has been playing a very visible role, is aimed in the first instance at bullying Russia and China into line by threatening to impose US and EU penalties on Tehran. In the background, the rising drumbeat of war is unmistakable.

The tensions flared into the open during a meeting in Moscow between the French and Russian foreign ministers last week. Since coming to office in May, French President Nicolas Sarkozy has adopted a more belligerent stance toward Iran, aligning his government more closely with the Bush administration. Just days before arriving in Moscow, Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner warned on French TV that it was “necessary to prepare for the worst… and the worst is war.”

In his joint press conference with Kouchner, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov publicly repudiated the suggestion of war. “We are convinced that no modern problem has a military solution, and that applies to the Iranian nuclear program as well,” he said. “We are seriously concerned about increasingly frequent reports that military action against Iran is being considered.”

Lavrov also criticised French efforts to press for unilateral EU sanctions outside of any agreement in the UN Security Council. “If we decided to act collectively on the basis of consensual decisions in the UN Security Council, what good does it do to take unilateral decisions?” he exclaimed.

Behind this pathetic appeal for a return to UN consensus, Lavrov obviously feels double-crossed, particularly by France, which Moscow had previously counted upon to help rein in Washington. Far from playing down the differences, Kouchner responded by declaring: “Contrary to my friend Sergei, I believe that we must work on sanctions, on precise sanctions, to show that we are serious. If there is no third resolution in the UN, we will maybe be forced to use them.”

By the standards of international diplomacy, the tone of the press conference was decidedly frosty. Both sides are well aware that the turn by the EU to join the US in imposing unilateral economic sanctions on Tehran opens up the prospect of joint military action against Iran. In the course of last week, Kouchner toned down his warnings of war, declaring that “everything should be done to avoid war”. But this formula is not markedly different from that of the Bush administration, which declares that it supports “diplomacy”, while refusing to negotiate directly with Iran and insisting that all options, including the military one, are “on the table”.

President Sarkozy delivered a similar message last Thursday when he flatly declared Iran’s efforts “to obtain an atomic bomb” were “unacceptable”. While declaring that France “does not want war”, Sarkozy did not rule it out. The developing alignment was on display in Washington the following day. At the joint press conference after talks with Kouchner, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice commented: “I think there’s essentially no difference in the way that we see the situation in Iran and what the international community must do.”

Efforts by the UN Security Council permanent members—the US, France, Britain, Russia and China—plus Germany to agree to new sanctions against Iran have been floundering for months. The previous UN resolution mandated the end of May as the deadline for Iran to shut down its nuclear facilities—in particular, its uranium enrichment plant at Natanz. Tehran has repeatedly declared that it is not engaged in building nuclear weapons and insisted on its right under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to enrich uranium to provide fuel for its planned nuclear power reactors.

Russia and China have both opposed demands for any immediate new sanctions and supported an agreement reached last month between the International Atomic Energy Commission (IAEA) and Iran to resolve outstanding questions about its nuclear programs. The Bush administration has bitterly opposed the deal and publicly castigated IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei, accusing him last week of “muddying the message” to Iran by not including a halt to uranium enrichment in the agreement. For his part, ElBaradei warned once again of the dangers of war, telling the Associated Press: “I would hope that everybody would have gotten the lesson after the Iraq situation, where 700,000 innocent civilians have lost their lives on the suspicion that a country has nuclear weapons.”

As in the case of Iraq, the US claim that Iran is seeking to build nuclear weapons is based on a flimsy concoction of supposition, half-truths and outright lies. The Bush administration’s objections to the IAEA-Iran agreement are completely hypocritical. Its justification for demanding that Iran freeze uranium enrichment—a legitimate activity under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty—was that Tehran had previously covered up its nuclear activities and failed to fully satisfy the IAEA on all of its activities. Now that Iran has agreed to clarify the IAEA on outstanding issues by the end of the year, the US opposes the process for wasting time. Washington’s unwillingness to wait simply confirms that it is working to its own agenda and timetable, which includes the “option” of military strikes on Iran while Bush still holds office.

Senior officials of the UN Security Council permanent members plus Germany met on Friday in an effort to bridge the schism in their ranks. A terse statement by US Undersecretary of State Nicolas Burns described the talks as “serious and constructive” but gave no details. In the course of this week, the six powers are due to hold further discussions, with a meeting of foreign ministers to be held on Friday. But with no signs of any agreement, the US and France are pressing ahead with unilateral sanctions. Britain, the Netherlands and Italy have already indicated support for imposing EU penalties on Iran. And while there have been indications of German opposition to new sanctions, German officials have downplayed any divisions between the major EU powers.

Underscoring Russia’s opposition to the US-led campaign to isolate Iran, Russian President Vladimir Putin is due to visit Tehran on October 16—his first to Iran—as part of a summit of Caspian states. Iran’s Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki visited Moscow last week and a meeting of the Iran-Russia Joint Economic Commission has been scheduled. Iranian and Russian officials have also held talks during the past week over the completion of Iran’s nuclear power reactor at Bushehr. Moscow has previously delayed the provision of fuel for the reactor, in large part to indicate its support for UN Security Council measures against Tehran.

Behind the conflicts between the major powers over Iran, fundamental economic and strategic interests are at stake. Russia, China and the European powers all have a major economic stake in Iran. Last year Germany was Iran’s largest trade partner, exporting $5.7 billion worth of goods to the country. But under pressure from Washington, Berlin has scaled back its provision of export credits. German exports to Iran in the first half of this year slumped by 17 percent. According to the International Herald Tribune last week, German exporters are concerned that China, which has rapidly expanded its trade with Iran, will fill the void.

France’s shift toward Washington highlights the mercenary considerations at stake. In 2003, the French government opposed the US invasion of Iraq and refused to support a UN resolution sanctioning the war. Its posturing quickly proved shallow as France joined other UN Security Council members in providing a veneer of legitimacy to the occupation after the event. Now, however, France under Sarkozy is actively drumming up support in Europe for the Bush administration’s campaign against Iran.

The new orientation is clearly motivated by an understanding that France will share in the spoils of US military adventures in the Middle East. Last month, the US oil giant Chevron signed a deal with Total of France to prospect and develop the huge Majnoun oilfield in southeast Iraq, near the Iranian border. Majnoun is estimated to be Iraq’s fourth largest oil field, with reserves of more than 12 billion barrels. Rights over the field had previously been awarded by Saddam Hussein to the French energy company Elf, but the contract was nullified by the US occupation.

As for the US, after nearly three decades of economic sanctions, its trade and investment with Iran is negligible. If the standoff over Iran’s nuclear programs were peacefully resolved and Tehran established normal relations with the rest of the world, the major losers would be American corporations, which have been compelled to watch on the sidelines as their European and Asian rivals established footholds in Iran over the past decade. The Bush administration’s escalating denunciations of Iran and preparations for war are a desperate attempt to once again use military muscle to establish untrammeled American strategic and economic dominance in this key resource-rich region.

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Further details have leaked out about Israel’s unprovoked air raid on Syria on September 6, underscoring its primary purpose as a menacing warning not only to Syria, but also Iran. Amid an escalating campaign orchestrated from the Bush administration over Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons programs, the operation was a graphic demonstration of Israel’s capacity to carry out its previous threats to destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Briefing the Israeli parliament’s foreign affairs and defence committee on Sunday, military intelligence chief Amos Yadlin boasted that Israel had recovered its “deterrent capability” following its disastrous war in southern Lebanon last year. Outlining the scope of Israel’s capacity, he declared: “The new situation affects the entire region, including Iran and Syria.” Yadlin then elaborated on the alleged threat posed by Iran and its nuclear programs, concluding that current UN sanctions “are not having much of an effect”.

Yadlin gave no details of the September 6 air raid and cautioned committee chairman Tsahi Hanegbi against discussing reports of the strike. Israeli authorities have slapped a total blackout on the operation, making it illegal for the media to discuss details provided by Israeli sources. As a result, the only reports in the Israeli press are based on accounts published in the international media.

Hanegbi absurdly excused the blanket censorship, declaring that it was needed to ease tensions. “The more we bite our tongue, the better it will go,” he told Israeli radio. The more obvious and ominous reason is that the Israeli government wants to keep everyone, particularly Iran and Syria, guessing as to its next move. A comment in Haaretz, entitled “Silence works for Israel”, noted with satisfaction that the lack of comment also allowed other governments, including in the Middle East, to say nothing and ignore Syria’s protests—in effect, backing the raid.

Several accounts of the raid based on Israeli sources appeared in the British and US press last weekend. While the details must be treated with caution, the articles indicate that a major operation was involved. The warplanes penetrated deep into Syrian territory close to its border with Turkey, near the town of Tall al-Abyad. Turkish authorities retrieved two jettisoned fuel tanks inside their territory, provoking a mild rebuke to Israel from Ankara. Turkey, which has longstanding military ties with Israel, has in the past allowed the Israeli air force to exercise over its territory.

In an article entitled, “Was Israeli raid a dry run for attack on Iran?”, the Sunday Observer explained: “Far from being a minor incursion, the Israeli overflight of Syrian airspace through its ally Turkey, was a far more major affair involving as many as eight aircraft, including Israel’s most ultra-modern F-15s and F-16s equipped with Maverick missiles and 500lb bombs. Flying among the Israeli fighters at great height, the Observer can reveal, was an ELINT—an electronic intelligence gathering aircraft.”

The information, from an Israeli participant in “Operation Orchard”, points to a sizeable and sophisticated operation, involving Israel’s war planes equipped with auxiliary fuel tanks with the range required to reach Iran. In January, Israeli military sources leaked details to the Sunday Times of the preparation of two air force squadrons for an attack on Iran that would include the possible use of tactical nuclear weapons.

Commenting on the September 6 operation, a retired Turkish general told the Turkish Weekly, “Syria is very close to Israel and you likely don’t need auxiliary tanks for a flight to a neighbouring country… Using this long flight equipped with tanks, Israel tested its ability to fly to Iran.”

Israeli authorities maintained a complete silence on the operation, but rather far-fetched stories began to appear in the US media of a Syria-North Korean nuclear connection. The Bush administration had undoubtedly been informed of and supported the Israeli operation. An unnamed US expert told the Washington Post that the Israelis had attacked an agricultural research facility in northern Syria that was involved in a nuclear project. Other media reports claimed that North Korea was exporting nuclear technology to Syria. Last weekend’s Sunday Times in Britain published claims that Israeli fighters, guided by an elite commando team on the ground, had struck and destroyed a target that was in some way connected to a Syrian nuclear weapons program.

As if to confirm that the story had been concocted for political purposes, its most vocal publicist has been former US ambassador to the UN, John Bolton. Since resigning from office, Bolton has functioned as a de facto public mouthpiece for Vice President Dick Cheney and his White House faction, who have been pressing for military action against Iran. As far as these warmongers are concerned, the Syrian-North Korean nuclear connection is perfect: firstly, it undermines the US-North Korean nuclear deal struck this year, to which they are opposed; secondly, it puts pressure on Syria to break from its ally Iran; and thirdly, it feeds into the hysteria they are whipping up over Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons programs.

However, as with the WMD lies told by Bolton, Cheney and others to justify the 2003 invasion of Iraq, scant evidence has been offered. Various experts have pointed to the extremely limited character of Syria’s existing nuclear programs. The Sunday Observer article commented: “There has also been deep scepticism about the claims from other officials and former officials familiar with both Syria and North Korea. They have pointed out that an almost bankrupt Syria has neither the economic nor the industrial base to support the kind of nuclear program described, adding that Syria has long rejected going down the nuclear route.”

Syria and North Korea have both emphatically denied any joint nuclear project. An editorial in Syria’s state-owned al-Thawra nervously warned of the implications: “This is nothing new, accusing Syria of things that it has nothing to do with. But what is new is the scope of the new lie and the way it is being peddled. The latest accusation could be a prelude to more attacks on Syria.” Syria’s own low-key response to the Israeli operation raid could well be a signal that it has understood the threat from Israel and the US.

As well as to Syria, the September 6 air raid operation was designed to send a warning to Tehran: that Israeli is ready, willing and able to strike Iranian nuclear facilities at any time. That was certainly the conclusion that the Sunday Observer reached, commenting: “Whatever the truth of the allegations against Syria—and Israel has a long history of employing complex deceptions in its operations—the message being delivered from Tel Aviv is clear: if Syria’s ally Iran, comes close to acquiring a nuclear weapon, and the world fails to prevent it, either through diplomatic or military means, then Israel will stop it on its own.

“So Operation Orchard can be seen as a dry run, a raid using the same heavily modified long-range aircraft, procured specifically from the US with Iran’s nuclear sites in mind. It reminds both Iran and Syria of the supremacy of its aircraft and appears to be designed to deter Syria from getting involved in the event of a raid on Iran—a reminder, if it were required, that if Israel’s ground forces were humiliated in the second Lebanese war, its air force remains potent, powerful and unchallenged.”

The raid took place as the Bush administration was escalating its threats against Iran, demanding tougher UN sanctions over Tehran’s failure to shut down its nuclear facilities, and building up forces along the Iraq-Iran border to counter Iran’s alleged “meddling” in Iraq. Washington’s silent approval of Israel’s military provocation is one more warning that the White House is quite willing and able to launch a military adventure of its own against Iran.

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An 80-page study written by two British security analysts and released on August 28 makes a chilling estimation of the overwhelming force that the US would use in the event of any attack on Iran. “The US has made military preparations to destroy Iran’s WMD, nuclear energy, regime, armed forces, state apparatus and economic infrastructure within days, if not hours, of President George W. Bush giving the order,” the paper declared.

The authors, Dr Dan Plesch and Martin Butcher, concluded on the basis of publicly available sources that “US bombers and long range missiles are ready today to destroy 10,000 targets within Iran in a few hours. US ground, air and marine forces already in the Gulf, Iraq and Afghanistan can devastate Iranian forces, the regime and the state at short notice.”

Both Plesch and Butcher have written extensively on security and international relations. Plesch is director of the Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy at the prestigious School of Oriental and African Studies. The study, entitled “Considering a war with Iran: A discussion paper on WMD in the Middle East” made no estimate of Iran’s nuclear programs—the nominal pretext for a US war—and reached no definitive conclusion as to the likelihood of an attack. But it did outline the Pentagon’s extensive preparations and examined probable US military strategies.

Plesch and Butcher assessed that any US military attack would not be limited to Iran’s nuclear facilities, but would aim to eliminate its ability to strike back by destroying its military capacities and economic infrastructure. “Any attack is likely to be on a massive multi-front scale but avoiding a ground invasion. Attacks focussed on WMD facilities would leave Iran too many retaliatory options, leave President Bush open to the charge of using too little force and leave the regime intact,” they stated.

The paper examined the Pentagon’s Global Strike plans developed under the Bush administration to enable the US military to strike anywhere around the world at short notice. Since 2001 in particular, the role of the US Strategic Command (STRATCOM), previously a nuclear deterrent against the Soviet Union, has been modified to “enable the seamless delivery of tailored effects, anywhere and anytime, across the globe…. The US has strategic forces prepared to launch massive strikes on Iran within hours of the order being given.”

Plesch and Butcher analysed the available types of US bombers and conventional bombs and calculated that 100 strategic bombers, each with 100 “smart” bombs, would be enough to hit 10,000 individual targets. “This strike power alone is sufficient to destroy all major Iranian political, military, economic and transport capabilities,” the authors conclude. “Such a strike would take ‘shock and awe’ to a new level and leave Iran with few if any conventional military capabilities to block the straits of Hormuz or provide conventional military support to insurgents in Iraq.”

The study all but ruled out the US use of nuclear weapons, declaring that “the human, political and environmental effects would be devastating, while their military value is limited.” But the authors did acknowledge “clear evidence that nuclear weapons use [against Iran] is being given serious political consideration” in the US. And while stating that a US or British nuclear attack on Iran was “most unlikely,” Plesch and Butcher did not think it impossible. They calculated that nearly three million “prompt deaths” would occur in the event that 300 kilotonne nuclear bombs were dropped on just 11 suspected Iranian WMD sites.

A substantial portion of the paper dealt with the various US options, using military forces already in place within the region, to counter Iranian responses to a US attack. “Iran has a weak airforce and anti-aircraft capability, almost all of it is 20-30 years old and it lacks modern integrated communications. Not only will these forces be rapidly destroyed by US air power, but Iranian ground and air forces will have to fight without protection from air attack,” the authors stated.

The paper noted the existence of standing US war plans to counter any blockade of the strategic straits of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf, and to seize the western Iranian province of Khurzestan, where the bulk of the country’s oil production occurs. It detailed the ability of the US military in neighbouring Iraq and Afghanistan to devastate forces and bases inside Iran hundreds of kilometres from the border without a ground invasion. It cited a variety of sources pointing to covert US operations already taking place inside Iran to identify targets and foment armed rebellion among ethnic and religious minorities.

Considering the question “how likely is an attack?” the authors pointed out: “The [US] administration has steadfastly refused to remove the military option from the table, and has continued to prepare to go to war. Congress rejected a proposal to require the president to consult it before going to war with Iran.” The study cited a number of menacing comments by senior Bush officials this year, as well as belligerent anti-Iranian statements by Republican and Democrat presidential candidates. It also noted Congressional moves for tougher measures against Tehran.

The authors rebutted many of the arguments commonly advanced as reasons why the US would not launch an attack on Iran. They assessed the likelihood of a compromise over Iran’s nuclear programs as “extremely remote” as “the United States refuses to offer any form of security guarantee to Iran, and indeed is actively engaged in attempts to undermine Iranian authorities.” As to the European Union’s attempts to broker a deal, “privately, and not so privately, senior US officials … deride the EU’s efforts as futile.”

Responding to those who point out the US military is bogged down in Iraq and lacks troops, the study stated: “Army overstretch from long-term deployments in Iraq is a significant problem, but providing forces for a short duration war (following the pattern of the initial invasion of Iraq) would be much less of a problem. Iran has little ability for conventional military attack outside its own territory, allowing the US considerable scope to sit back and await internal developments after the type of attacks described in this paper.”

The paper also considers Iran’s capacity to retaliate in other ways, either directly against US allies like Israel and US bases or indirectly by encouraging unrest among Iraqi Shiites. The authors regarded such arguments as strengthening the military case for an overwhelming, rather than limited, US attack. They pointed out that Iran retained some options for counter-missile strikes and had closely observed US military operations around its borders. “At the same time, the US armed forces have been preparing for this contingency for many years and it would be hard to be the military commander telling President Bush that Iran is just not ‘doable.’”

Plesch and Butcher did not make any predictions about a war, but they did note that the lack of publicity surrounding US military preparations was no guarantee against a US attack. “US military, if not political, readiness for a war using minimum ground forces indicates that the current seeming inaction surrounding Iran is misleading. The United States retains the ability—despite difficulties in Iraq—to undertake major military operations against Iran. Whether the political will exists to follow such a course of action is known only to a few senior figures in the Bush administration.”

Plesch and Butcher made no attempt to analyse the underlying economic and strategic reasons for a US attack on Iran or to consider in detail the potential for it triggering a broader war. Their study in no way challenged the escalating US propaganda campaign concerning Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons programs. The real motivation for a reckless, new US war on Iran lies in the Bush administration’s attempts to establish unfettered American dominance in the resource-rich regions of the Middle East and Central Asia. Any outcome that allows America’s European and Asian rivals to strengthen their influence in these key regions is simply intolerable to the US ruling elite.

The rather limited scope of the study only makes its conclusion all the more disturbing: the military preparations that would allow the Bush administration to reduce much of Iran to rubble at short notice have already been completed.

The CRG grants permission to cross-post original Global Research articles on community internet sites as long as the text & title are not modified. The source and the author’s copyright must be displayed. For publication of Global Research articles in print or other forms including commercial internet sites, contact: crgeditor@yahoo.com

www.globalresearch.ca contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available to our readers under the provisions of “fair use” in an effort to advance a better understanding of political, economic and social issues. The material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving it for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material for purposes other than “fair use” you must request permission from the copyright owner.

The Bush administration’s abrupt dismissal of last Thursday’s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report on Iran’s nuclear programs is one more sign that Washington has no interest in a diplomatic resolution to its confrontation with Tehran. Following Bush’s bellicose denunciations of Iran last week, the US has reiterated its intention to push for tougher UN sanctions against Tehran this month.

The IAEA report, which is due to be discussed at its board meeting beginning next Monday, sets out its latest assessment of Iran’s nuclear facilities, including the construction of a uranium enrichment plant at Natanz and a heavy water research reactor at Arak. The report also includes details of an agreement reached with Iran for a timetable to resolve by December all the questions raised by the UN agency over the past four years.

IAEA Director Mohamed ElBaradei told the media: “This is the first time Iran is ready to discuss all outstanding issues which triggered the crisis in confidence. It’s a significant step. There are clear guidelines, so it’s not, as some people are saying, an open-ended invitation to dallying with the agency or a ruse to prolong negotiations and avoid sanctions.”

Washington quickly dismissed the IAEA-Iran agreement as inadequate and insisted that Tehran comply with US demands for the suspension of all nuclear enrichment programs. US State Department spokesman Tom Casey declared last Thursday: “There is no partial credit here. Iran has refused to comply with its international obligations, and as a result of that the international community is going to continue to ratchet up the pressure.”

This response underscores the hypocrisy of US allegations that Iran is covertly seeking to build nuclear weapons. Tehran is a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and continues to allow IAEA inspection of the Natanz enrichment plant, which it maintains is to provide fuel for its planned nuclear power reactors. As it has repeatedly insisted, Iran has the right under the NPT to build an enrichment plant, as Brazil for instance is also doing, and to construct research reactors for peaceful purposes.

Bush officials have highlighted Iran’s failure to clarify the IAEA’s outstanding issues as “proof” of Iran’s lack of transparency and of its nuclear weapons’ plans. Some of these “issues” are based on dubious evidence supplied to the IAEA by US and Israeli intelligence. Far from welcoming Iran’s willingness to provide the documentation and access to officials required to deal with the issues, the Bush administration has branded the IAEA agreement as an Iranian ploy to gain time and implied that the IAEA is an Iranian dupe.

The US reaction recalls the lead-up to its invasion of Iraq in March 2003 when Bush officials summarily dismissed the reports of the IAEA and other UN weapons inspectors, which stated that no “weapons of mass destruction” (WMD) programs had been found and called for more time to carry out searches, as a ruse by the Hussein regime. The lies that were used as the pretext for war were quickly exposed following the invasion when the US military’s own teams failed to find any evidence of Iraqi WMDs.

Responding to the latest US criticisms, ElBaradei declared last week: “My responsibility is to look at the big picture. If I see a situation deteriorating… [and] it could lead to war, I have to raise the alarm or give my advice.” Prior to the previous IAEA board meeting in June, he frankly told the BBC: “I have no brief other than to make sure we don’t go into another war or that we go crazy into killing each other. You do not want to give [an] additional argument to the new crazies who say ‘let’s go and bomb Iran’.”

Last week’s IAEA report found that Iran’s progress in installing the gas centrifuges required to enrich uranium at its underground hall at Natanz had slowed considerably. Since the previous report three months ago, Iranian technicians had only gotten several hundred new centrifuges up and running. As of August 19, the IAEA reported that 1,968 centrifuges were operating with another 656 in various stages of assembly or testing. The IAEA verified that the level of enrichment was that required for nuclear fuel—well short of the highly enriched uranium required to build a bomb. The IAEA also reported that one outstanding issue related to plutonium experiments was already “closed” after Iran provided access to a key expert, documentation and other data.

Next week’s IAEA meeting promises to be another exercise in US bullying and arm-twisting as the Bush administration prepares for a diplomatic offensive in the UN to demand tougher punitive sanctions on Iran. The White House has already leaked plans to brand the entire Iranian Revolutionary Guard (IRG) as a “specially designated global terrorist” organisation. Criminalising the IRG, a major part of the country’s armed forces, would clear the way for unilateral US penalties not only against Iran, but any foreign corporation or bank that had relations with any of the IRG’s many businesses.

The US threat to brand the IRG as a “terrorist organisation” is in the first instance aimed at intimidating other UN Security Council members into passing new sanctions against Iran. Russia, China and the European powers all have substantial investment and economic interests in Iran, which could be subject to American penalties if any links were demonstrated to IRG businesses. The UN Security Council, including its permanent members—the US, Britain, France, China and Russia—has previously imposed two rounds of sanctions on Iran, but Russia and China in particular have expressed reluctance to impose harsher penalties.

US preparations for war

Iran’s disputed nuclear programs are just one element of the White House’s mounting propaganda war against Tehran. In a belligerent speech last week, Bush denounced Iran as “the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism” and declared that “Iran’s active pursuit of technology that could lead to nuclear weapons” placed the region “under the shadow of a nuclear holocaust”. He condemned the IRG’s alleged training and arming of Shiite militias in Iraq, saying he had authorised the US military to “confront Tehran’s murderous activities”. In an ominous warning, the US president concluded: “We will confront this danger before it is too late.”

A lengthy commentary entitled “Will President Bush bomb Iran?” published yesterday in the conservative British-based Telegraph noted that the US had advanced preparations for military strikes. The article began by pointing out that top US officials, including from the Pentagon and State Department, had recently completed a four-month exercise, held under the auspices of the right-wing Heritage Foundation think tank, designed to simulate the impact of a US war with Iran.

The computer modelling found that if Iran closed the Straits of Hormuz, oil prices would double, $161 billion would be wiped off the US GDP in a single quarter and a million jobs would be lost. The Heritage Foundation nevertheless concluded that the study’s policy proposals “virtually eliminated all of the negative outcomes from the blockade.”

The Telegraph article noted that Bush’s speech was “designed as a threat not just to Iran, but to America’s Western allies, along with Russia and China, who have been slow to support—or who have opposed—UN sanctions against Iran.” James Phillips from the Heritage Foundation told the newspaper: “It [the speech] is simultaneously a shot across Iran’s bows and an appeal for the international community to do more to stop or slow Iran’s nuclear program.”

The article reported that European observers, and some in the American government, believe that Bush has resolved to “do something” about Iran before he leaves office. A State Department source said: “If we get closer to the end of this administration and we are not seeing suitably tough diplomatic actions at the UN… then people will start asking the question: how do we stop our legacy being a nuclear-armed Iran?”

The Telegraph noted that “credible reports” indicated that “the US has stepped up clandestine activities in Iran over the past 18 months, using special forces to gather intelligence about military targets—nuclear infrastructure and airbases, and Revolutionary Guard command centres.” The article pointed out that US military plans to strike Iran with B2 bombers and cruise missiles included “up to 400 sites, only a few dozen of which are linked to the nuclear programs… first in the crosshairs would be the main centrifuge plant at Natanz.”

Yesterday’s British Sunday Times reported the comments of Alexis Debat from the conservative Nixon Centre who told a gathering last week that the Pentagon had drawn up plans for a three-day aerial blitzkrieg against 1,200 targets inside Iran. US military planners were not preparing for “pinprick strikes” against nuclear facilities, but for “taking out the entire Iranian military,” which Debat described as a “very legitimate strategic calculus”.

As the Telegraph noted, opinion polls reveal that just one in five Americans currently support the bombing of Iran. Moreover, the CIA has told the Bush administration that it has not come up with a “smoking gun” that would create domestic or international support for such a war. “Last autumn, the CIA told the White House that while it believes Iran is running a clandestine nuclear weapons program, it does not have conclusive proof. Radioactivity detention devices placed near suspect facilities did not find the expected results,” the article explained.

None of this will stop the Bush administration from using the IAEA and UN meetings this month to accuse Iran of secretly producing nuclear weapons and backing “terrorists” in Iraq and the region. Washington is once more seeking to stampede public opinion and create the conditions for another criminal military adventure.

The CRG grants permission to cross-post original Global Research articles on community internet sites as long as the text & title are not modified. The source and the author’s copyright must be displayed. For publication of Global Research articles in print or other forms including commercial internet sites, contact: crgeditor@yahoo.com

www.globalresearch.ca contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available to our readers under the provisions of “fair use” in an effort to advance a better understanding of political, economic and social issues. The material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving it for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material for purposes other than “fair use” you must request permission from the copyright owner.

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